2 legit 2 quit

Interesting sentence: “…there was no peace candidate at all in El Salvador in either1982 or 1984, although the polls and reporters kept saying that peace was the primary concern of the electorate. This highlights […] the fraudulence of these elections”. Very similar to polling to USA 2008.

There was a somewhat free election in Nicaragua, but not in El Salvador and Guatemala (no politically inspired murders of terror), although censorship is prevalent in all countries.

Mass media is almost completely from gov’t source while other more reliable on the ground sources tell a different story.

To this point in the narrative there is little corporate filter, and I guess he considers the false portraits that the gov’t paints as flak, but it would be better if it was identified as such.

2 Responses to “2 legit 2 quit”

I just ran across a couple of interesting stories. I caught a bit of PBS talking about variety shows. It was the Smother’s Brothers, then Laugh In. The Smother’s Brothers went in with low expectations and tough competition, but despite that ended up with top ratings. While at the top they were canceled because of their criticism of the Vietnam War.

And I was just at Ted Rall’s blog. He’s been doing some radio interviews. A radio station called recently to cancel. The reason? Concern that advertisers wouldn’t like it. His views are too “extremist”. And by extremist of course they mean his views are entirely mainstream, but outside of the realm of permitted expression.

So don’t presume that what is shown reflects what people want to see. Ratings are not the primary concern. The concern is pleasing the power centers, whether the state or the business community.

There is a lot to unpack here and I don’t have enough time to do it completely. First of all, broadcast television is explicitly regulated by the FCC, and is in fact censored. The FCC being a government agency will push the governments agenda. Secondly, the Smothers Brothers did very well among the younger generation. If shows were determined democratically, by a poll of all adults, it would likely not have been on the air at all.

And the final point is, given scarce resources, how should time be allocated? Smothers Brothers seemed to be canceled, at least in part, due to personality conflicts between the more conservative management and the more progressive artists. The network loses money by not renewing the show. If there was a market for on-air talent like there is today with cable TV (and there was not with broadcast TV), then the Smothers Bros can go where they are best compensated. There are problems with allocation by price, but what is an alternative that doesn’t just hope for people to behave better?